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A WAY TO GET THE WORLD ON THE SAME WAVELENGTH

June 7, 2003 admin 61 Comments

OK, you guys, here it is. If you scrutinize nothing else I send you, hearken to this. Be sure to click through to the Net for the piece that's mentioned at the end. (Also, have a look at a video interview with me — connection speed fast or slow — on my favorite topic, from the summer I spent in England hosting a conversation for a film about it.)

Here, it's Walter Starck and me, delving into the mysteries again. (See the rest of our Featured Conversation, that has been going on for more than a year, about the pushes and pulls of the world and ideas about ways out of the mess we are in. It starts here, and this gets it from the most recent entry.)

Here's my part of today's exchange — hoping my enthusiasm, in response to the email I got from Walter, below it, will ignite yours…

Suzanne to Walter:

You and I are so much on the same beam. Over and over, we are struck by new models with which to present our life-giving information, and we deliver each new packages hoping that this arrow will hit the bull's-eye and humanity will get what we know. Strange but true, us little grains of sand have keys to the kingdom. Where oh where is the lock?

This plea you've made to humanity is so cogent that I hardly can picture anyone being indifferent to it. I want to take a full page ad in the New York Times. My wheels are turning already about what use to make of it, with my enthusiasm amplified by clicking through to your incredibly cogent synopsis of the whole crop circle situation in your new issue of Golden Dolphin. I relished it all, including the links you provide. Bravo, Walter. Your summary towards the end is a telling paragraph:

“Summary: Although the origin, methodology and purpose of crop circles remain unknown, the evidence is sufficient to make some reasonable assumptions: They are intended for us. An unknown force is involved in their formation. Their design reflects a high level of intelligence. They are not so much intended to instruct with specific information as to provoke thought and awareness. Their intent is benign and care is being taken not to harm anyone. Their frequency and their content have a relationship to the response they receive. There is no reason to suspect human origination other than the lack of any other explanation. There is no reason to not suspect involvement of non-human intelligence other than a refusal to consider such a possibility.”

This is what I was responding to…

Walter to Suzanne:

Recently I had a lucid dream and awoke with that “eureka!” feeling of having an answer to a long pondered problem. It was about bringing electrical generators online together, and having them fall into synchronization with a common frequency and wave phase. Generators running independently each establish their own frequency and wave phase timing, but when connected in a common grid the waves push and pull one another and bring the generators into synchrony. This is well known and basic to grid function. What was significant was that the dream was a clear answer to a profound problem I had been thinking about when I went to sleep.

That problem is how to get humanity to work together. Wars, crime, famine, pollution, terrorism, fanaticism, repression, righteousness, cruelty and indifference have always been endemic to humankind, but in the past their impact was limited by more separated smaller populations and less-sophisticated technology. Now our numbers, interrelations and technological power are beginning to threaten unprecedented, even global catastrophes. Everywhere one looks there are massive and growing problems. Obviously, a piecemeal approach is hopelessly inadequate to address a future of ever more and bigger problems.

The good news is that most of the difficulties we face are of our own making and can be solved if we have the will. The question then becomes how to find a way to work together. Where can we find an impetus to arrive at common agreements?

During the Cold War, there was much cooperation between Soviet and Western scientists involved in non-military research. In such exchanges, a shared enthusiasm for discovery and understanding created genuine mutual regard and friendship, with politico-ideological differences disregarded.

Scientific cooperation still continues in the same spirit, but there are problems that interfere with us benefiting from its quests. Science is largely inaccessible to non-scientists. Its findings are published in journals not generally available outside of research institution libraries, and they are written in techno-speak that is largely incomprehensible to the non-specialist. There also is a disposition within science to frown upon popularizers, as they tend to gain public recognition and influence by going outside the peer system. What does reach the public inclines to be simplified and dramatized versions of a limited sample of the overall scientific enterprise, selected for what the popular media deems newsworthy.

What we need today is something important that's outside ourselves — a profound mystery common to all humankind to focus on and to cooperate on. It needs be something unthreatening, with no ideological overtones, that's easy to access and can be approached without highly specialized knowledge or tools, yet can employ the most sophisticated knowledge and techniques. It should also have far reaching implications. In fact, such a thing does exist. It is the crop circles phenomenon.

Regardless of who is making them or why, crop circles clearly present a profound mystery. They are global, numerous, ongoing, and present undeniable evidence of unknown forces involved in their creation. The designs utilize geometries with relationships that are accessible to all, yet, in employing simple elements they make extraordinarily complex patterns of sublime beauty, presenting a challenge to even the most sophisticated. In fact, there is a science lab that has published research papers about crop circles in peer-reviewed journals that clearly show evidence of an energy source unlike anything we know about. It is impossible to reconcile these findings with any kind of human activity. This should be front page headlines, yet it is virtually ignored.

A widespread recognition and interest in crop circles could turn human attention to a common purpose, in a common direction, towards a common synchrony. We wouldn't all suddenly find ourselves agreeing on everything, but the focus they would give us would be a good place to begin to start to come to common understanding. Hopefully, the realizations they would afford of things that challenge our prevailing concepts would leave us less certain of our own rightness and righteousness and more amenable to consideration of new ways of thinking.

Crop circles are a profound mystery. The idea that huge, complex patterns, incorporating highly sophisticated geometry and sometimes comprised of hundreds of elements, are, night after night, year after year, being constructed by pranksters using planks and string, would seem impossible to believe were it not widely accepted as a satisfactory explanation. How much does it take to get our attention? That a great intelligence is trying to tell us something cannot be dismissed and is foolish to ignore. We have nothing to lose but our ignorance.

For a detailed overview of the crop circle phenomenon, see the new issue of Walter's video CD magazine, Golden Dolphin (click where it says For the full text of the main Crop Circle article…). He's included a crop circle piece in a body of work that's essentially about underwater life. Walter is a PhD pioneer in the scientific investigation of coral reefs, and has invented underwater diving and camera equipment that's in common use today.

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World Press

More conversation about “IRAQ: WHY THEY DON’T WANT DEMOCRACY”

June 3, 2003 admin 31 Comments

Here's more smart conversation, following up on a previous post which we might call, “Jake Levich takes on Milton Viorst,” in Conversation about “IRAQ: WHY THEY DON'T WANT DEMOCRACY”

From: LGenutis@aol.com [LGenutis@aol.com]

Wow! Great responses on this article — thanks for sending them — great read!

From: Wade Frazier [public.email2@verizon.net]

I think Jake has the goods on Viorst's work. Anybody who writes for The New Yorker has to be a little suspect. : – )
Viorst writes from many lib left presumptions which are not very helpful to the folks living in the Islamic world on that Renaissance issue — the classic Greek works appeared in Western Europe because Islamic scholars preserved and studied them, and their translations, which deeply influenced Thomas Aquinas, among others, began coming to Europe during the 13th century. Aquinas has often been called Catholicism's greatest thinker, and he tried reconciling Aristotle's works with Christian theory. In Western Europe, the Catholic Church had long since eradicated all the classic Greek writings it could because they were “pagan.” Western Europe owed a great debt to Islamic culture when it began pursuing humanism and science.
Jake hits it on the head when observing the underlying arrogance of our position, as if we can bring those folks “freedom.” We are losing our own more quickly than ever. As Palden observed, the West has been one of the greatest influences in undermining freedom in that part of the world for the past two centuries. Thinking that we can bring them freedom through the barrel of a gun is about as ludicrous as it gets, which is no news to you, I am sure. : – )

From: Walter Starck [ggoldend@bigpond.net.au]

Both Viorst and Levich raise points worth considering, but matters of such complexity can always be reasonably presented from any number of different perspectives and in the final analysis even the most learned and reasonable are still only guessing. Perhaps the most useful lesson from history is that most of us most of the time are wrong, and even the best are only right sometimes. It behooves us not to be too adamant and give consideration to all possibilities.
Levich espouses an ideological position, but that does not mean he is wrong. He attacks Viorst most strongly for not having what he considers proper credentials, though this has nothing to do with the validity of Viorst's ideas. Truth has no particular regard for authority. The key point of Viorst's, that Iraq is not ready for democracy, is one that should not be dismissed. It is naive to assume that all the world is just waiting for one-man one-vote liberal secular democracy. This only barely works in societies tolerant of diverse opinion, with an educated electorate informed by a diversity of independent media. Trying to implement it in an uneducated, ill-informed society riven by religious and tribal divisions is highly problematic.
Across the entire Muslim world, from West Africa to Indonesia, there is not one example of a liberal democracy. only one country, Malaysia, has achieved a successful modern economy, and even there most of the economy is dominated by a non-Muslim minority. Trying to attribute this situation to coincidence, colonialism, or U.S. imperialism is irrational and unhelpful. The causes are surely rooted in the nature of the societies themselves. The success of various non-Muslim East Asian nations is in distinct contrast. Despite being subject to similar or even worse colonialism and imperialism, they have rapidly developed modern economies and are making good progress toward increasing degrees of democracy. Also, they have done so without having undergone a renaissance.
The idea of science as having originated in the Islamic world and been imported to the West is also simplistic. Science has drawn upon a multitude of cultural threads. The Islamic contributions, chiefly in algebra and chemistry, are only two of many. Whatever weight one wishes to place on the Islamic contribution, the fact remains that despite such a head start they have made little progress in the past 500 years. Their problems are their own and in the end only they can solve them. Trying to blame them on others at best only helps perpetuate them. At worst, it encourages more terrorism and ever more devastating retaliation.

Suzanne to Walter:

Thanks for broadening this exchange to add nuances that take it beyond where it has had black an white aspects of right and wrong to it. You have such a wonderful capacity to see the big picture. That's a gift of yours. You would have been an inspired judge. I am so grateful to be hooked up with you, and know that you will bring invaluable smarts to whatever else we do, beyond the interchange we are having that provides the Featured Conversation on my website.

From: Madeleine Schwab [madeleineschwab@yahoo.com]

So good…. That this broad and thoughtful conversation is even taking place is truly heartwarming. Walter comes across really well in his writing. Allen Branson's quote of Chomsky was just what Chomsky said on KPFK this morning. Wow…impressive…mind-bending.

From: Allen Branson [allen@theconversation.org]

Walter said pretty much what I would have said. I'll say, “Ditto.”
My only addition would be to respond to Jake's statement, “Of course they want democracy.” Jake says he is “not aware of anyone, anywhere, who wants to be dominated and tyrannized by dictators or unrepresentative ruling elites.” This both presupposes that any form of government other than democracy is necessarily tyrannical and that democracies are necessarily not tyrannical (and are representative). Those who might not consider democracy the best form of government are those who feel attacked or oppressed from the outside. During war people feel the need for a strong leader, not for consensus building. I'd offer as evidence how even here in the U.S. we willingly toss aside our liberties when we feel danger from the outside — there are those who felt, after 9/11, that they wished they could give both George Bush and Rudy Giuliani lifetime appointments to office. I think the point Viorst was trying to make in terms of the Enlightenment is that democracy is not (or has not been) a natural form of government for human beings to tend toward. We are a species that finds hierarchical social groupings more natural. We tend to play follow the leader. The Enlightenment was so named for the new thought it produced, including new thought (for Europeans, anyway) on the place of people in the world and so the rights of people within culture. This is why legends, such as King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table, carry so much psychic weight. They speak of an egalitarian social/political order that is beyond “human nature.”

From: Jacob Levich [jlevich@earthlink.net]

At 12:26 PM 5/29/2003 -0700, you wrote: [Anybody know the rules of formal logic? Jake — this has a name. Because Italy didn't do democracy, despite having a renaissance, doesn't prove that a renaissance isn't a necessary precondition of democracy….Suzanne]
It's called the conditional fallacy in informal (not formal) logic, and you're quite right — the way I hastily phrased it, it reads that way. What I should have said was something like this:
Viorst implies that the readiness of a culture or nation to embrace democracy is linked to its experience of “a renaissance.” It's not clear whether he means that a renaissance is a necessary, or a sufficient, condition for democracy. Either way, he's wrong. It can't be a sufficient condition, since there are numerous instances of nations embracing fascism or other forms of dictatorship despite having had a renaissance — including Italy, the historical center of the European Renaissance. But it can't be a necessary condition because there are numerous instances of nations embracing forms of democracy without having had a renaissance: e.g., India or South Africa.
I stand by my words: “Of course they want democracy.” Democracy, strictly defined, is government by the people. I'm not aware of anyone, anywhere, who wants to be dominated and tyrannized by dictators or unrepresentative ruling elites. on the contrary, people universally want to determine their own future, although they disagree on how that is best to be accomplished.
If you and Viorst mean to say that the people of the Middle East don't want “democracy” as experienced by Third World nations under imperial or neo-colonialist domination, then of course they don't. Why would they? That sort of “democracy” is just a front for US-backed ruling elites looting national wealth, gangsters of the kind who are currently destroying Kosovo, Peru, Lebanon, the FSU, Afghanistan, etc. — and now, of course, Iraq.
Thanks for the praise, by the way — and you're to be congratulated for opening up your list to dissenting views. In the same week I requested retraction of a shameful error in another newsletter — one whose editors call themselves “sentries of truth” — and discovered that the sentries were not exactly on duty!

This and That

Bo Lozoff is a sainted man

May 30, 2003 admin 53 Comments

More exchanging, which I'll pass along, is going on in the wake of the Viorst post, but I'm interjecting here with something inspirational.

Bo Lozoff is one of the true saints on this earth. To stay aware of what he thinks and what he does is to pump pure love into your heart. I know this man — which you feel after one exposure to him. There is no one like him. It's a special quality of love, grounded in absolute non-judgment, and also in raw honesty.

Lessons in right thinking are to be derived from the invariably surprising-in-their-perfection responses he makes to letters from incarcerated prisoners that I love to read in his Human Kindness Foundation Newsletter. The premise he comes from is stated on the Foundation website: “The primary purpose of the Prison-Ashram Project is to inspire and encourage prisoners and prison staff to recognize their depth as human beings, and to behave accordingly. Our inmost nature is divine. The nature of our lives is an incomprehensibly wonderful mystery which each human being can experience only in solitude and silence. Prisoners have the opportunity to dedicate themselves to this inward journey without the distractions and luxuries which occupy many people in the 'free world.'”

To be as beloved as Bo is by prison populations, and to achieve results that bring hard core criminals into a recognizable humanity, where you and I listen to their struggles and feel we meet as people, is a function of the rare humanity that Bo embodies. It's not a guru sort of thing with Bo. I'm not following him anywhere. It's just profound appreciation for everything I can see in all directions around him. He is 180 from the phoniness of the neo-conservatives who are running the country now — authenticity is a high art with Bo. And no reality show is as gripping or as touching as his Newsletter.

For a larger dose of him, read his first book, We're All Doing Time, that's the primer on the Prison Ashram Project. When I found it, years ago, I bought a case so I could share it with others, and it remains in my handful of all-time favorites.

If you are so moved, do send him a donation. You'll see on his website where they are what allow him to do his work, including sending his books free to prisoners who request them.

As you'll see reflected in this piece Bo wrote for the current Newsletter, he's not totally out of the energy of the year he spent in total silence, which began just before 9/11.

Spring 2003

The Real Deal

Dear Family,

It seems from your letters that many of you have been waiting for me to come out of silence and get back to being the old Bo with lots of words to share. It’s ironic how life unfolds. You and I have been supporting each other’s spiritual journeys for a long time now, praying for deep change in ourselves. Yet when really deep change takes place, we may resist it and say “come on, get back to “normal” already!

I do seem to have changed a lot from the past two years of silence and solitude. I don’t know when or IF I will be the “old Bo” with lots of words, lectures, books, tapes. I offered my life to God, and God seems to be calling me away from that sort of teaching for the time being. I’m not abandoning you, I’m doing the same thing I have always done and encouraged you to do: Keep following the spiritual journey and dedicate that journey to the common good. That hasn’t changed, I promise.

My first forty-day retreat, from September 2nd to October 12th, 2001, was more intense and confusing than any other time of my life. When I came out of retreat and heard about 9/11 and watched the fanatic hostility of our country’s response to 9/11, I realized the whole world was in an intense and confusing period, especially my own country. So why should I expect to be exempt?

The spiritual journey is not an escape from the world. The great masters, saints, the Messiah, come into this world, suffer along with us, and show us how we can respond when times are crazy, cruel, sad or unfair. The gifts of Spirit they give us have never resulted in political peace or social stability, but rather a personal, internal peace that “surpasses understanding.” Life is hard and uncertain right now for most people on the planet. So if my own life is hard and uncertain too, that’s okay with me. I can work with it. How about you? Can you “suffer hard times gracefully?”

My old friend Stephen Levine uses an image of “soft belly.” We can go through hard times with a soft belly, a sense of humility and acceptance, without throwing up walls of rejection and resistance and fear. And we can use our rough times to strengthen our compassion for the world, for everyone who is also having rough times.

You may ask, what distinguishes this state from a passive acceptance of depression or despair? Love. Love is always the key to the spiritual journey. To be in love with God, with God’s mysteries, God’s power, God’s love, God’s laws, even God’s many apparent cruelties. As most of us have discovered, being in love does not necessarily mean we feel happy all the time. one of my favorite Bob Dylan lines, from Buckets of Rain, is “Everything about you is bringing me misery!” That’s definitely part of love, especially when we love God! Read the lives of the great saints, especially in the Christian tradition. Misery upon misery, pain upon pain, but underneath, a Love that purifies, consoles and heals.

So I think it is love that makes the difference. I think many people these days, in the onslaught of daily chores, pressures and fears, have lost love. It has slipped away. So when they get depressed or unhappy, there is nothing underneath it to help them endure. But Love endures. We all have the capacity to love something. Find out what you love at your very core, and don’t let it slip away. Hard times are hard, it is a drag to be unhappy, but it is not the end of the world. Love endures. We can endure.

And that’s basically what I am doing these days. This is not a happy period for me and not a social time. But I have not gone off on a detour. My path just seems to have changed a great deal, at least for the moment.

My days are spent in supportive tasks – milking the cow, cutting firewood, fixing vehicles, plowing gardens, keeping our computers running so you can receive our books and tapes, etc. I work hard, I meditate, pray, chant and sing a couple hours a day, and wait for God’s further leading. Waiting is not fun, but it humbles the arrogant spirit. It quiets the mind.

So I am still here, still your friend, your brother on the radical spiritual journey, but I’m not spinning out new combinations of words all the time. The star of the show should always be God, Life, The Journey, Dharma, or whatever you wish to call that single idea or reality that makes EVERYTHING else worthwhile. If we bring ourselves and others closer to constant awareness of that central loving force, then our lives are not wasted. If we do not bring ourselves or others closer to that awareness, our lives are wasted. It doesn’t matter how popular we are or how wealthy or how busy. Nothing else matters. I’m still here with you, breaking new ground together. Hang in there with me, okay? I love you very much.

I also want to give you a taste of his prisoner correspondence:

Bo,

First I wanna say that I think what you and Sita are doing is a good thing mostly. It is not my thing (I don't even try it), but some people in this world just need somewhere to lay all their bullshit. I am doing a four-year bit (it ain't nuthin and I ain't whining), and I have been in the hole for 112 days now with no end in sight, for mutual combat. Someone sent me your book, “We're All Doing Time,” and I read it. I am an ex-Hell's Angel (out in good standing) and have been through some heavy shit, believe me. I just want to say your sympathy for child molesters is a waste of your time. I treat them like shit every chance I get and they deserve it. Children are the only true innocents in this world. Joe on page 222 is a piece of shit. Fuck him and fuck you.

T

Hey T,

Nice to meet you (I guess, even after you ended your letter with “Fuck you….”).

I do understand the “fuck you,” and in friendship I throw it back at ya — fuck you, too. You sound like a tough guy, and so am I — in fact, I'm tough enough to take the heat of all the tough guys who think child molesters are a piece of shit. A HUGE percentage of those pieces of shit wee innocent children who were molested themselves. So you have sympathy for the children, but not for who they become after such a terrible thing happens to them?

The main thing is, T, I'm old and gray and have been around long enough to see many pieces of shit become extremely good, decent people. So what can I do? I'm stuck with the wisdom of my own life-experience — I know people are basically decent deep inside, and I don't have a crystal ball to see which ones are going to make that change and which ones won't. So I treat everyone with respect. Not bullshit, bleeding-heart liberal candy-ass pampering, but just the respect that says “somewhere in there is a good, strong person, and I greet you there.” That's all. I obviously wouldn't allow a child to get molested. If I knew it in advance, I'd do WHATEVER NECESSARY to stop the offender, just like you would. But when that person is safely locked up and reaches out for help and friendship, what can I do? That's my job. Just like responding in friendship to a biker who signs off, “fuck you.”

It's still good to know you, brother,
Bo (another old biker)

Bo, I received your letter today. I can't say it changed the way I feel about child molesters, but your points are well taken. I must say, I do enjoy reading some of your material, and I look forward to seeing your other books. I don't claim to have the wisdom that you possess. I guess my hang-up about child molesters is something that I and they will have to deal with.

With respect, T

PS: I would think that someone who was a victim of child abuse would not want anyone else to suffer it. I was, and I wish it on no one.

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